The video games industry is so bad at keeping secrets that leaks are almost treated like a regular part of the marketing cycle. But the one for Marvel Vs. Capcom: Infinite did seem to do serious damage, in that there’s two very different criteria on which people judge these crossover fighters. One is, of course, the gameplay, but the other is whether the roster has a good mix of essential and unexpected characters. On that latter point Infinite is something close to a disaster, and yet in terms of how it plays it’s possibly the best the series has ever been.

The Vs. games have always been treated as a special event, like the interactive equivalent of a telethon – where it seems like almost any forgotten celebrity could be dragged up for a quick fan-serving cameo. But that happens disappointingly few times in Infinite, and that seems to be in large part because Marvel doesn’t want to promote any character that they don’t currently have the film rights to. Which not only means no X-Men or Fantastic Four characters, but also no weird C-listers that you wouldn’t have guessed at.

There are 30 characters available in the game at launch, 15 for each side. And of the 15 Marvel characters only Nova hasn’t appeared, or is planning to appear in, a recent movie or TV show. And he’s clearly only in it because he was in Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. But that’s the other problem: of the 30 characters only five have not been in one of the previous titles before. The new Marvel ones being Captain Marvel, Gamora, and Ultron, while for Capcom all you get is Jedah from Darkstalkers and Mega Man X.

The game’s story mode hints at several new DLC characters, including Black Panther and a character from Monster Hunter, but it’s a poor show all round and makes it very hard to refute accusations that Capcom has just copied and pasted characters over from the last game.

Especially when Infinite includes the likes of Spencer, from the failed 2009 reboot of Bionic Commando, when at the very least he should’ve been reskinned to look like the classic version of the character that people might actually care about. And for that matter, why is Chris Redfield still the piggy-eyed Hulk version from Resident Evil 5, instead of the redesign from the newer games?

It all smacks of laziness and/or a lack of budget, but we suspect that most of these roster decisions were taken by lawyers and marketing people. Because despite what the line-up suggests this is a game that’s been made with a lot of love.

The Starting Roster

Marvel Vs. Capcom: Infinite character line-up

Marvel Characters

Captain America

Captain Marvel

Doctor Strange

Dormammu

Gamora

Ghost Rider

Hawkeye

Hulk

Iron Man

Nova

Rocket Raccoon

Spider-Man

Thanos

Thor

Ultron

Capcom Characters

Arthur

Chris Redfield

Chun-Li

Dante

Firebrand

Frank West

Jedah Dohma

Mega Man X

Mike Haggar

Morrigan Aensland

Nemesis

Nathan Spencer

Ryu

Strider Hiryu

Zero

As well as a bit of fun for veterans, the Marvel Vs. Capcom games have nominally been intended as an easy way into fighting games for those not used to the genre. But it’s not really until this entry that the series has taken that role seriously, and offered both proper training tools and more accessible gameplay mechanics.

Weirdly, the story mode does almost nothing to teach you the controls, but the training and mission modes are amongst the most comprehensive Capcom has ever offered (and yes, there’s an Arcade mode too). But the game also allows you to use an auto-combo by just jabbing the square button, or initiate an auto-special move by pressing just two buttons at once.

Some might complain that’s dumbing down, but clearly any experienced player will still have an enormous advantage; instead the simplified options give new players a chance to compete, or have fun in single-player right from the off.

Marvel Vs. Capcom: Infinite (PS4) – apparently Spencer was a favourite of one of the designers

Veterans might also complain that the tag team matches only have teams of two instead of three, and there are no assist characters, but since you can tag your team-mate in at any time, including mid-combo, they end up working in very much the same way. Rather than being dumbed down the game plays a little more slowly and more technically than previous entries, with more variety between character move-sets and less emphasis on impossible-to-counter aerial moves.

In any case, the main gimmick of the game is using Infinity Stones. You can pick one of the six before you start a match and these impart both an extra move, such as a teleport attack or homing missile, and an ‘Infinity Storm’ special. So, for example, the Space stone traps your opponent in a magical cage for a few seconds and the Soul stone can revive a fallen team-mate and let them fight at the same time as you. This works extremely well to either compensate for a character’s failings or magnify their strengths.

The gameplay in Infinite is a huge amount of fun, but almost everything else surrounding the game is problematic, including the so-so visuals and uniformly dull backdrops. The latter are mostly mash-ups between two different worlds, such as Mega Man’s future metropolis and Thor’s Asgard, which is the premise for the two-hour long story mode. The plot for this is played entirely straight, which is just as weird and pointless as it seems. And not helped at all by the lack of any decent jokes or any sense of self-awareness.

In terms of presentation, Infinite lacks pizazz. There’s no cheeseball theme tune when you start it up, just drab menus. It feels like a game of two halves, and not in the sense that the title implies. The gameplay and move-set design is great, but the visuals and character choices are dull and predictable. We don’t think we’ve ever said this before but we’re genuinely looking forward to hearing about the DLC, in the hope that it can turn this into the title fight it deserves to be.

Marvel Vs. Capcom: Infinite

In Short: It plays as well as the series ever has, and is far more accessible than previous entries, but there’s infinite room for improvement in terms of the roster and presentation.

Pros: Fun, fast-paced fighting gameplay that’s accessible for newcomers and has plenty of depth for veterans. Very well designed move-sets. Good range of game modes and training options.

Cons: Uninspired line-up of characters is very disappointing. Bland visuals and a general lack of panache to the presentation.